Sunday's Post-Practice Erickson Quotes

Benjamin Muth

08/19/2007

After a short practice on Sunday night, ASU's Head Coach Dennis Erickson addressed the media.

His thoughts after watching the scrimmage film:

"Well I saw some mental mistakes on offense. Not as bad as I thought originally. Not very consistent, we need to become more consistent offensively. We have got to get these guys healthy that are limping around here. We got a lot of guys that are not healthy and we have got to get them ready to go by the first of September. I thought defense did good. A really good effort, they are getting better all the time. Dane Guthrie has had such an impact. It was a good move for us. Sometimes things happen that, well with Louis (Vasquez) getting hurt that forced us to play (Guthrie), and he probably ended up where he should have been all along. But defensively we are playing pretty good."

On the play of Dane Guthrie:

"He has played that (defensive end) in high school. Some guys have natural instincts to play certain positions. He has great hip explosion. I guess you could call him a natural defensive player. I don't know if they ever thought about playing him on defense before we got here. But he has some natural instincts. He has to play a game, he hasn't played a game. I think he has a chance, it just remains to be seen."

"Not right now, we are getting closer. After Saturday's performance Sampson jumped up a little bit so. We are going to scrimmage some with that third group on Wednesday, and kind of evaluate some of those young guys again."

"He had cartilage taken out and it is probably going to be seven to eight weeks. He had surgery. It was his left knee."

On where the team is compared to where he wants it to be?

"A ways away. We are a ways away from where we need to be. Got a lot of work to do the next two weeks. We will start preparing for San Jose on Wednesday and Thursday this week. Rudy will get into it the next week."

On how to improve:

"You really start to improve when you start playing games. You really don't know where you're at till you play a game. So It is really hard to tell. September 1st we will know more about where we are at."

On his professional career and the influence it brings to ASU

"Our practices are like NFL practices because we go long, fast. I think the X's and O's are a lot of things that we learned in the NFL, because that is what you do all day. It's all X's and O's. that's probably the biggest impact professional football had. You learn a lot of game planning and game play and all that stuff in the NFL.

On NFL preseason compared to NCAA's preseason:

"Nobody cares if you win or lose (in NFL preseason). You can sit on the sidelines of a preseason game, you don't care what happens. The only time they get upset is when you lose. You can look at different things, and experiment with different things and evaluate players. It is kind of all on the players because they are trying to make the team. They are not on scholarship if they are not good enough. You just don't play your first group very much."